Slow Mac? What to Do and What Not to Do

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If you feel that your Mac should have better performance or is too slow, and you see the spinning rainbow wheel a lot, this article will offer some pointers.

What NOT to Do

First and foremost, do not panic - the slow-down is not caused by a virus, and is almost certainly not due to any kind of malware. See Viruses, Malware and Adware on the Mac for more information. If a slow-down is the only issue you are experiencing, it is almost definitely not due to malware.

Secondly, if you are going to remove system files without being fully aware of what process they belong to, be sure you have a backup, as such a procedure may cause data loss.

In addition, do not download any software that says it will "clean," "enhance," or "improve performance" on your Mac. Some programs are often scams, and will claim that your computer is infected (if the program also has an anti-virus function) or in "critical condition" regardless of what is on your Mac (this statement is mostly referring to MacKeeper), and ask you to pay for the full version of their software. Other programs are simply dangerous and will delete system files that OS X relies on to run smoothly (or at all). Especially avoid cleaning programs with aggressive advertising tactics, like MacKeeper and CleanMyMac.

What to Do

This section will explain the software and hardware aspects of what may be impacting your Mac's performance. Before you do anything, be sure to back up all data. We recommend using Time Machine, which comes with your Mac, but there are third-party offerings as well. All you need is an external hard drive. Apple sells a wireless hard drive called a Time Capsule.

Software

One thing to try is to clear system caches. Click on Finder in your Dock, then from the menu bar at the top, select Go, and then Go to Folder. Type in: ~/Library/Caches. You can delete everything in this folder without repercussions. Repeat the same process for /Library/Caches (without the tilde). Although caches are there to help things run faster, they may become corrupt, so even if you do not notice an improvement right away, give it time.

There could be some third-party software you have installed that is creating a conflict. Such software, ironically, includes programs that claim to "clean" or "enhance performance" on your Mac. More details are in the "What Not to Do" section above. There could also be other third party software aside from cleaning programs that is causing the slow-down.

Activity Monitor is your Friend

Another built-in utility in OS X is Activity Monitor. One way to access it is to enter "activity monitor" into a Spotlight search (press Command + space to access Spotlight). Take a look at the CPU and Memory tabs to see if there is a particular application or process that is eating up a lot of CPU or memory. Usually, the fans will run louder if there is a high CPU usage. NOTE: Prior to OS X 10.9 Mavericks, you need to select one of the headers in Activity Monitor to organize the processes by that type. For example, select "CPU" at the top to organize processes by CPU usage.

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When the small arrow to the right of the header name is pointing up, processes are organized from least to greatest. Click on the header so the the arrow will point down, indicating that processes are organized from greatest to least.

If there is a troublesome application, and it repeatedly hogs resources, you may consider uninstalling it.

Launch Items

Using the same "Go to Folder" function of Finder, look at ~/Library/LaunchAgents, /Library/LaunchAgents (again, without the tilde), and /Library/LaunchDaemons. Here you will find several .plist files. Files in these folders mean that the program they are associated with is running some sort of process in the background, in which case they are using up system resources even when the program is not running. If you see any .plist files that belong to third party programs you know that you have installed, try removing those programs by going to the Applications folder, dragging their icon to the trash, and emptying the trash. It is easy to identify which program the file belongs to, because the file name begins with "com," followed by the company name, followed by the app name, followed the the file extension, "plist."

NOTE: When removing such files, restart your computer after emptying the trash.

Hardware

First and foremost, check to see how much RAM your computer has installed. To do this, go to  > About This Mac. Look at the line titled "Memory." Also look at the line titled "Version" to figure out which version of OS X you are running. Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) requires 512MB of RAM. Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) requires 1GB of RAM. OS X 10.7 (Lion) and later require 2GB of RAM. Note that if you have the bare minimum required for your operating system, your Mac's performance will probably be less than stellar, and you should consider getting more RAM. The requirements mentioned above are the amount of RAM that the operating system needs for its processes. To run anything on top of that, you are almost definitely going to need more RAM. Two widely-recommended Mac RAM vendors are Crucial and OWC. If you need to know the exact memory specifications for your Mac, try Crucial's System Scanner.

Also, the problem could be your hard drive. It is always a good idea to have at least 10% free space on your hard drive, as anything less will likely impact performance. For example, if your hard drive is 250GB, you should plan on having 25GB free. If you have enough free space, you might also try repairing the disk. This is done with Disk Utility, an application included with OS X. However, you cannot run Disk Utility straight from your startup disk for this purpose, as it will not let you repair the disk you are currently using. To repair your startup disk, boot to a different partition or drive. The most effective way to do this would be to select the Recovery partition and run Disk Utility from there (OS X Lion and later), or to insert either the gray Mac OS X install disk the came with your Mac, or a retail Mac OS X installer disk (Mac OS X Snow Leopard or earlier; may be a flash drive for MacBook Air users). To do this, restart your Mac ( > Restart). After the screen goes dark, hold down the "option" key while the Mac is booting back up. A screen which shows all bootable drives should then be displayed. OS X Lion and later users should see "Recovery HD" as a choice. Mac OS X Snow Leopard and earlier users, upon inserting the install disk, should see the disk as an option (it may take a minute for the disk to be read). Boot to the appropriate drive. Once booted, select "Utilities" from the menu bar at the top, and choose Disk Utility (if you booted to the Recovery HD, you can select Disk Utility from the main menu as well). From the sidebar on the left in Disk Utility, select your main hard drive (NOT "Macintosh HD," that's just the partition on the hard drive - the drive itself should be above this in the list). Then press Repair Disk, which is near the lower right of the window. If the disk cannot be repaired, your hard drive may be failing, so back up whatever data possible and look into having it replaced.

You might also consider upgrading to an SSD (solid state drive), if your Mac came with a traditional HDD (hard drive). Upgrading to an SSD means faster loading and faster bootup times, whereas upgrading the RAM means your computer can handle more at once.

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